The Wounded Generation
The Wounded Generation, David Nasaw. Penguin Press (ISBN: 9780593298695) 2025.
Summary: The experience of veterans returning from World War II, their invisible wounds and their impact, and the G.I. Bill.
We know them as “The Greatest Generation.” They were the veterans of World War II who fought a two-front war against fascist Italy and Germany and against Japan. My father was among them. Over 16 million Americans served in the military. For many of the men and women who fought on the front lines, they returned as different people than when they departed. Some bore obvious physical wounds. But others bore invisible wounds, traumas we would not begin to understand until the Vietnam era.
Those traumas took their toll on the veterans and their families. While these traumas were poorly understood at the time, our government did understand its need to reintegrate these large numbers of people into American9 society. The G.I. Bill may have represented one of the greatest social programs up to that time, targeting the welfare of a particular population, although Black benefits did not share many of those benefits. David Nasaw, whose father was also one of those veterans, offers in this book, an analysis of the experience of Americans returning home from the war.
Nasaw begins by describing how news reporting and the film reels shown in theatres told a heroic version of the war. Meanwhile, the details of the horrors of the war were carefully censored. This also included many of the bad habits troops acquired while in service. Nasaw describes the free distribution of cigarettes which addicted a generation, the alcoholism, and the sexual ventures of the troops. Then there were those left behind, particularly wives and girlfriends. They did not always wait faithfully.
When the war ended, the government faced the challenge of demobilization. European veterans faced possible reassignment in the Eastern theatre until Japan’s surrender. Nasaw analyzes the tension between gradual demobilization cushioning the impact of returnees with the pressures of waiting families. No one quite anticipated what both the veterans and their families would face.
There was the challenge of marital readjustments and the resultant rise in divorce rates. Then there were the psychological problems. On one hand, no one wanted to be labeled a “psych,” Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of the book describes the experience of those sent to hospitals enduring electroshock treatments or even partial lobotoimies. Most dealt with the nightmares and psychic pain by drinking, with resultant climbs in the incidence of alcoholism. and they tried to ignore the problems by throwing themselves into civilian life
But physical challenges also confronted the veterans, from getting jobs to finding housing to purchasing scarce consumer goods. Nasaw also describes each of these challenges and steps the government took to address them. The biggest of these was the G.I. Bill. Veterans benefits included a weekly benefit while they sought employment, mortgage assistance, and most prominently, educational benefits.
But not all veterans equally enjoyed those benefits. Nasaw chronicles the systematic discrimination against Blacks, both during the war and in access to benefits, often controlled by the states. Particularly, the Jim Crow South did not want Blacks to advance. And even in the North, Black veterans were often shut out of certain housing markets. Women and homosexuals also faced forms of discrimination.
However these programs did have a huge impact on the American landscape. Millions used G.I. benefits to go to college. Housing developers like William Levitt found ways to streamline home construction, building the American suburbs achieving record levels of home ownership, especially among Whites. The social programs extended to veterans fed the advocacy of the Civil Rights movement.
Nasaw also reminds us of the darker toll of the war reflected in the rising incidence of lung cancer and early deaths from alcoholism. Only after Vietnam did doctors identify and develop treatment for PTSD. For World War II veterans, it was often the death of a spouse or retirement that finally led them to talk to someone. Others had traumatic brain injuries, undiagnosed for decades.
None of what Nasaw describes in this book takes away from the accomplishments of “The Greatest Generation.” Rather, he brings to light the quiet heroism of those who went on to fight other battles. Some struggled with inner wounds while others faced discrimination. He also calls attention to the effectiveness of the social programs linked with the G.I. Bill, even with its shortcomings.
As I read this book, I wondered about my own father and how the war changed him. He was proud of his service in a mobile field hospital in Germany but he said little about his service apart from a visit of a general to award medals to troops. While he was close to but not on the front lines, he saw the effects of war. Like many veterans, he threw himself into work on returning home, providing for his family. He neither smoked nor drank. But I wonder what he carried from those years. Whatever is the case, he was certainly a part of “The Greatest Generation” in my eyes.
